Google has been dabbling in own-brand smartphone marketing and support ever since 2010, but the search giant only started taking this business seriously six years later, when the first Pixel generation was born. Based on its most recent sales figures, Apple was selling nearly 850,000 iPhones each day in the first quarter of 2018. This will surely be welcome news for Google as it continues to grow the Pixel brand. It's unclear, though, how many of these 3.9 million units were actually sold to end customers.

The Google Pixel smartphones were supposed to be Android's answer to Apple's iPhone.

One thing that's clearly impacting sales is distribution. Get 15% OFF your Google Pixel 2 case or Google Pixel ... While the numbers are not great in the global smartphone market, it shows steady growth for the company's lineup.

While he didn't provide any concrete figures, Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently confirmed during the company's quarterly earnings call that Google has seen its device shipments more than double year-over-year. More countries, a better retail presence, and more carrier deals would be a good start.